My husband and I like to take road trips. We may plan a 3 week quest for new and exciting, a short excursion for information and shopping, or a day trip to somewhere familiar just for the fun of it. Recently on one of these jaunts, I found myself noticing the absence of bug guts on the windshield. This came on the heels of an earlier observation that there was a noticeable shortage of birds sitting on the wires. I remember when I was a kid traveling with dad, there were birds everywhere down the country roads we traversed. When we were actually going somewhere and took the faster routes, there were also birds. Meadowlarks and redwing blackbirds by the dozens sitting on the wires that stretched alongside the highways.

Okay, so that was Iowa and this is Texas, but still when I first got here I saw birds on the wires. Shrikes, scissortails, kites. And bugs on the windshield. And lots of butterflies. Then all of a sudden nothing. Um. Too much human encroachment? Maybe drought. We have had an abundance of dry years. Instead of a complaining about no rain, I say it that way so as to not anger the rain gods when they get here!

Things may be improving. On a late November trip last year, we had to look through three quarters of Texas’ bug population to see the road in front of the van. And then this trip last week there were not so many bugs, but some, and there were lots of red-tail hawks aloft and sitting on poles and fence posts. Of course, the fields are being plowed and planted here, this being March, so there is plenty of rodent type prey for those guys. I did also see birds on the wires, as of old. Many unidentified, but definitely birds. And I saw lots of butterflies, thankfully at a stop-for-a-walk-in-the-woods, not being desecrated on our windshield glass.

And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit. (James 5:18)

And now it’s June and we have had, thankfully, some really good rain. I am seeing many more birds on the well-traveled roads, not-so-well-traveled roads, in trees in the cities and butterflies in my backyard. The last of the Martin nestlings are flight-testing their new wings, sparrow babies are soloing and warblers and woodpeckers are gracing the branches of me mesquite trees.

So as eternally happens, spring renews the seasons, the earth and our human expectations of all being right with the world.

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I can only be small and delicate in my dreams, but I like the gossamer wing idea. So perchance I leave those to dreaming. And come here to share the bigger, more substantial thoughts that occupy my daytime thinkings and imagination.